Culture is the root and soul of a country and a nation. The excellent traditional Chinese culture is an important source of modern socialist culture with Chinese characteristics and an inexhaustible spiritual driving force for the Chinese nation. As our country’s comprehensive national strength unceasingly climbs, the Chinese traditional culture receives increasing attention from people of all walks of life. The cultivation of rice in the south and wheat in the north in China leads to a huge cultural difference, which shapes individual behavior by influencing individual values, and subsequently influences enterprise governance mode and management decisions. Using the data of the origins of the founders of family businesses listed on A-share market from 2008 to 2020, this paper examines the relationship between collectivist culture and family business innovation and its impact mechanism. The results show that collectivist culture inhibits the innovation input of family firms, and the level of family control plays a mediating role. When the market regulatory environment is better and the political association of enterprises is lower, the influence of collectivist culture on innovation is more obvious. This DBA dissertation thoroughly analyzes the specific path that affects the innovative ability of family businesses. It enriches the related research on family business governance and technological innovation, contributes to the empirical evidence of eastern cultural context, and provides reference for strengthening the dominant position of technological innovation in family business and improving the level of regional innovation.

The aim of this dissertation is to examine the factors influencing the franchise value of international banks in the long run. Tobin’s Q ratio (i.e., simplified version, Price to Book value) is applied to measure the franchise value on a dataset of 40-year performance (1981-2021) of the Global Systematic Important Banks (G-SIBs). Factors including the macro, operational, and business factors are analyzed using the fixed effect linear regression models to identify their correlations with the franchise value. The findings indicate that macro factors, such as interest rate, globalization cycle, pattern of global value chain, and stock market performance play a vital role in determining international banks’ franchise value. Macro factors play a more important role than operational factors such as leverage ratio and risk appetite, as well as business scope of a bank measured by business diversification and the scale of business. An analysis of a smaller sample indicates that investment in technology is another main factor driving the franchise value of international banks. In addition, peer group comparison of similar banking models is also conducted for universal banks, investment banks, and Japanese banks separately. Finally, two case studies of the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse in 2023 are discussed to echo the rationale drawn from the empirical analyses of G-SIB banks.

Increasing globalization and the knowledge-based economy creates a higher-than-ever demand for skilled migrant labor. While Global North countries are the traditional destinations for skilled migrants, Global South countries have recently joined the race for such talent. The conventional migration scholarship does not adequately explain this increasing Global-North-to-South skilled migration. This dissertation fills the gap by studying mobility and its underlying factors for skilled U.S. migrants in the Pearl River Delta region of China. Using data from semi-structured interviews and sketch mapping, this dissertation develops a capital-mobility framework and employs intersectionality theory to examine the impacts of skilled U.S. migrants’ capital and intentionality on global and local spatial mobility as well as occupational and social mobility. The first empirical paper highlights skilled U.S. migrants’ cross-border im/mobility and introduces the capital-mobility framework that argues migrants’ im/mobility outcomes are shaped by their aspirations to move, and the accumulation, transferability and convertibility of various forms of capital. While the migrants’ capital was smoothly transferred to China and facilitated their voluntary mobility, the continued accumulation of capital in China could not be fully transferred to the U.S. upon their return, thus causing involuntary immobility. Although they mostly had little intention of staying in China permanently, the COVID-19 accelerated their return. The second empirical chapter shows that one’s accumulation of capital could generate both enabling and limiting effects on their everyday mobility through influencing the capability to move and the demand for local travel. Whether migrants had intention to move around in the local city also affects their everyday im/mobility. The third empirical paper discusses skilled U.S. migrants’ occupational and social mobility and how they are influenced by the intersections of race, gender and citizenship. I coined the term “glass box” to explain the limited professional growth and segregated occupations of skilled U.S. migrants’ occupational mobility in China. Although their social mobility improved after moving to China, it declined after rising racial discrimination and xenophobia during the pandemic. This dissertation sheds light on the aspirations and capabilities for mobility among Global-North-to-South skilled migrants and provides policy recommendations for attracting and retaining skilled international migrants.

Since 2007-2008, Africa has become the center of estate-driven land acquisitions to produce feed, food, biofuels, and fiber for the international market, which has raised contested narratives of African development and critical sustainability challenges. This is the case for the “Sisal Belt” of Kilosa in Tanzania, where Chinese firms resurrected former colonial sisal estates and generated wage labor for adjacent farmers, changing local agrarian structures with significant implications for smallholder cultivation and the environment at large. Land system science aims to understand the land use and land cover dynamics as a coupled social-environmental system, focusing on the spatiotemporal patterns and the underlying socioeconomic and environmental drivers, impacts, and feedbacks of land system change. Following this interest, this dissertation uses three empirical studies to understand the processes of land system transformation in the sisal belt region and examine the consequences of the co-development by the estate and smallholder agriculture. The first study conducts long-term time series land-cover mapping and remote sensing analysis via Google Earth Engine to detect land changes and their spatial and socio-economic linkages to estate operations and smallholder livelihoods. The second study applies agent-based modeling to assess the distinctions among smallholder households in land-use and livelihood decision-making mechanisms when confronting estate wage labor and cash crop opportunities. The third study quantifies and identifies critical tradeoffs between carbon, water services, and the outcomes of commodity economies based on distinct future scenarios of development visions and estate-smallholder relationships up to the year 2030. The findings of these studies advance the understanding of the human-environmental conditions of estate and smallholders in Tanzania under the African land rush underway, which is consistent with the interest of land system and sustainability sciences. The policy implications drawn from this dissertation suggest that the primary land users and decision-makers should recognize the history and realities of the existing agrarian systems and engage in creative ways that serve the estate and the smallholder, including improving smallholder production and localizing estate operations. Such policies should be informed by assessments of changes in the environment and its services and be guided by local knowledge, needs, and future aspirations.

This dissertation focuses on the psycho-cultural perceptions and social interactions among a sample of 58 Chinese immigrant women in the Maricopa County, the Phoenix metro area of, Arizona, and the manner in which they are able to negotiate multiple identity markers that in part influence and define their capacity to achieve and maintain self-referential growth. The central question this dissertation seeks to address is: what historical forms have emerged, accumulated and reproduced through the actions of women in spaces within and between households, networks and social relations, voluntary associations, political participation, economic and financial transactions, and educational, religious, and civic, recreational and artistic activities; and how are these symbolically represented?This research is comprised of three stages. First, I show how a group of Chinese immigrant women living in, Arizona, combine the Eastern and Western connotations of the Phoenix metro area, to create a fourfold conceptual metaphor of the phoenix. Second, I demonstrate that how such symbolization and metaphorization represent their personal immigration experience, femininity, ethnic identity, and geographic location. Third, I also highlight how they associate themselves with the heuristic of the phoenix as a tool for self-empowerment, virtue, well-being, and self-representation. This dissertation concludes that the Chinese women living in the Phoenix area not only apply the metaphor of the phoenix to themselves, but also reference this mythical bird in their social media ID, clubs names, and themed events, and include it in their oral traditions. In contrast, they reject, negotiate, or resist the stigma and stereotypes attached to the “dragon” symbol which often convey qualities of overpowering and irrational oppression in western mythology. Instead, they associate themselves with the heuristic of the phoenix as a tool for self-empowerment, virtue, well-being, and ethnic self-representation. Such metaphorization and symbolization contribute to their resistance to the symbolic violence by countering with their own powerful self-referential narratives, that have shaped their Chinese community.

This project analyzes the diversity of the various Chinese languages present in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The diversity and presence of these languages can be used to make inferences about different aspects of the Chinese American community in the Phoenix area, and therefore the dialects and compared to other aspects of the Chinese American immigration experience, such as where immigrants are from, what areas of Phoenix they reside, and the Chinese language skills of both the participants and their children. The data is then presented with historical context of the Phoenix Chinese community as well as a brief discussion on the current Chinese community in Phoenix as well as the acculturation of Chinese American children.

As immigrants in the United States, Chinese small business entrepreneurs often encountered social and cultural barriers in the areas of finance, language, and employment in their new environment. This dissertation investigated how they utilized social capital to surmount the embedded disadvantages of an unequal market in their adopted country. The findings presented in this qualitative descriptive multi-case analysis, conducted in the greater metropolitan regions of Phoenix and Los Angeles, demonstrated the importance of social and transnational ties created in the United States within the local Chinese community as well as their social connections brought from China.

Drawing upon the data from in-depth interviews and informal observations, this dissertation was guided by three research questions: (a) What barriers do immigrant small business owners encounter? (b) What social connections provide help for immigrant small business owners to overcome those barriers or intensify their disadvantaged situations? (c) How do social networks influence immigrant small business development? The findings revealed many provocative facts on how social capital stimulated Chinese immigrant small business owners.

The influence of local and strong ties especially provided essential start-up funds, an affordable labor force. Those ties also provided authentication for business information provided by weak ties. Although the governments’ Small Business Administration empowers small business by various programs because it is an important social and economic element in the U.S. market, the Chinese community rarely utilized this support.

Transnational connections played an important role in the relatively mature market found in Los Angeles, but indeed all respondents in both case studies exhibited great interest in utilizing transnational connections to explore business opportunities. Regional connections provided a powerful resource for Chinese small business to create business alliance and increase their market competitiveness. Social capital embeds in a complexity of political, economic, social and personal backgrounds. In summary, social capital was an essential resource for Chinese small business when they encountered the barriers in the local market. From the findings, this dissertation’s scholarly contribution adds to the field of social capital studies by combining the investigation of social capital, embeddedness, intersectionality and transnational connections in respect to study immigrant entrepreneurship.

Objective: This study examined how the belief (internalization) in the model minority myth of achievement orientation and of unrestricted mobility relates to one’s social awareness of racial inequity and inequality in society (critical consciousness) amongst Asian American college students. Methods: Participants (N = 275, 67.7% female, M_age = 22.35) were recruited from Asian American ethnic studies classes, clubs and organizations and completed an online cross-sectional survey. Results: Results indicated that internalization of achievement orientation significantly correlated with levels of racial critical consciousness while unrestricted mobility did not. Conclusion: These findings extend research exploring the correlates of critical consciousness on internalization of racial stereotypes for Asian Americans.

This paper is based on a research undertaking to understand China's presence in Africa and how this relates to Western relations with the continent. The research attempts to determine which option, Europe/US or the Chinese, may be the most suitable partner in development for Africa, as well as discuss what can be done to maximize the benefits, and mitigate the negative aspects of that relationship. A comparative analysis approach is used to judge the viability of each partner, and each is assessed according to a set of criteria, including the following: 1. Equitable and Respectful Relations 2. Maintenance of Sovereignty 3. Ability and Willingness to Finance Sustainable Development in Africa 4. Shared Experience and Understanding 5. Historical Element Drawing on the collected research presented in this document, the major finding is that the Chinese have a fundamentally different approach to aid and investment, and harbor conceptually distinctive ideas regarding development than the West. Based on the outcome of the comparative study against the above criteria, it is suggested that Africa may benefit from selecting China as a partner in achieving its own sustainable development, and suggestions are offered to effectively leverage this partnership.